Economic evolution: Our greatest venture ever!

Guest post based submitted material by ecoSanity.org Kindred Defender, Dr. Peter D. Carter, M.D.

ecoSanity.org Founder, Glenn MacIntosh’s statement in the ‘Founder’s Imperative’ about the threat of extinction within the lifetime of a child today should be hard hitting to people’s complacency and denial.

I use the term extinction of humanity so as to agree with James Lovelock and David Suzuki that isolated pockets of human beings may somehow survive, but it will barely be survival as animals.

Hoping on adaptation to a planet changed beyond the experience of homo sapiens is a delusion.

Humanity’s success has always been through adapting land in small ways to their regional advantage and always by burning biomass in some form.

With the exception of cold climates (Eskimos) and low number hunter-gatherers, humans are poorly adaptable and most vulnerable.

We must attempt to return the biosphere to its stable, early 1900’s state, and we have a narrow, fast-closing window of opportunity to apply all our accumulated knowledge to this immense task.

We know that humanity has to achieve virtual zero-carbon economy to survive and it is achievable, but only if we get honest and realistic about it right now. There is no time to spare.

This means the urgent redevelopment of a super-efficient, renewable, global energy infrastructure amounting to the greatest human venture ever!

The primary shift is for all our institutions to prioritize the condition of the biosphere as their prime and overriding responsibility. This switch in attention is the essential thing. People must engage with the state of the Earth.

Given our current technologies, once a +2 C tipping point is broached, the biosphere is out of our control. As Nasa scientist, James Hansen, and Met Office (UK) chair, Peter Cox, now say we can no longer avoid reaching +2 C.

This means we have to develop chemical and biological technologies to extract CO2 from the atmosphere or life will not survive. As a result, our economy must change from extractive destructive to one that is largely solar and bio-based.

* * *

Relying on hope is crazy. That will get us nowhere. We need eco-intelligence and determination to ensure the survival of our precarious agriculture upon which we all depend. That means WATER in reliably predictable, seasonable amounts.

Something people tend not to realize is that each decline is more irreversible as temperature increases.

Ours is a mono-culture that relies on chemical pesticides and fertilizers. There has never been a more precarious version of food supply.

It would be disastrous if, as it has started to, agriculture in the southern hemisphere were allowed to fail. If we let Africa die, we condemn the rest of the world to follow.

There is consensus that agriculture in the U.S. and Canada is at risk.

At +3 C, agriculture on all continents would fall below current levels, and that in itself would lead to the end of humanity.

The web of nature has begun to unravel. Our destruction of natural complex ecosystems has brought on the worst extinction event ever, with species disappearing faster than the dinosaur extinction that led to the age of mammals over 65 million years ago.

Many biologists say this has already ended the Cenozoic age – the greatest flourishing of life ever.

By denying the awful risks now, we deny a future for our children. The human species will not survive a global ecological collapse.

There is no other choice. We must redesign our global economy to manage the biosphere; restore and replenish nature’s great ecosystems. And we must do it NOW!

 

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